Week 11 and 12

Hard to believe 3 months in already to this build up phase.  While I haven't exactly got up to the miles that I had hoped, I do feel much more comfortable on all my runs now.  This week is the first week of my actual marathon training and so far it has been going pretty good.  I'll update that next week since this blog is dedicated to the last two weeks.

Week 11 -
I won't go to in depth on these weeks but just highlight a few of my runs.  I did a 5 x800 meter workout or what in the running lexicon is called Yasso's.  Did a 400 jog in between and hit what I was hoping.  Ran 3:04, 3:07, 3:04, 3:08, 3:01.  So if the adage holds true that 800's are a predictor of your marathon time then I should be set up for a good marathon in San Diego (I dont believe that by the way, I was running 2:50's last marathon training and wasn't close to that on race day).  But this was a good workout for me to build some turnover at a faster clip and get some good hard VO2 max training in.

Other highlight run of this week was 13 miles on Saturday.  Was pretty consistent the first 9 miles sitting around 8:20-8:30 and last 4 went down each mile including the last one at 7:43.  This was by far my best long run yet.   Hopefully the all can go this well.

Week 12 -

Not much to talk about this week.  Since I was going to start my actual training next week I decided to take this as a rest week and only ran two days.  Had two good runs but it was nothing really to talk about.

So now i'm all rested and ready to attack the next 16 weeks.  I've found out i'm going to be traveling a bunch the next couple of weeks so that will throw some wrenches into my training and cause me to do some mid week long runs but gotta survive and adapt.

Fundraising:  Nothing new on the fundraising really.  I'm up to $3,325.  I went to the kick off meeting for our Team in Training group and was excited to meet some of them.  A bunch of great people doing something extraordinary for a good cause.  Many of who are not big runners, bikers, triathletes, etc.  Being that I had already hit my goal I was recognized at the meeting and presented with a team in training hat (which will come in handy at San Diego) and a bag so that was nice.

Anyway that is it for this week.  Again if you haven't donated yet please use the link below and donate and if you have it would be great if you shared the link with others.

http://pages.teamintraining.org/nc/rnr12/brandonhillisformybro